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Red Velvet Poke Cake

Yes, I’m at it again. My slight obsession. Ok, my huge obsession with poke cake seems to be neverending. The idea for this one came when I was at Wal-Mart. I managed to drag my little guy and husband along to the store on this occasion. Y’all have no idea how rare that is to have both of them along.

We were on the baking aisle and I looked at Gene and said, “What do you think of a Red Velvet Poke Cake?” He shrugged his shoulders and casually said, “Sounds good I suppose.” He obviously was not catching on quickly enough to my small moment of brilliance here. I expected a “Well dang – that’s the best darn idea I ever heard of for a cake!” He and I are always on different levels of excitement at different times. Then he asks, “What kind of pudding?” You gotta give the man credit for at least understanding what a poke cake is.

Now that was the kicker. I had originally batted around with this idea using a White Chocolate pudding as the filling. But really, the icing on a traditional Red Velvet Cake is a cream cheese frosting. So it had to something cream cheesy. Well, dontcha know, Jell-O makes a Cheesecake flavored pudding. Hot Dog! We’re in business folks. And the rest is Red Velvet history. Oh, and by the way, Gene’s excitement finally hit when he took a bite of this cake! Never doubt the power of a Poke Cake.

Ingredients:

1 box red velvet cake mix

ingredients needed to make cake (eggs, oil & water)

2 (3.4 oz.) boxes instant Cheesecake-flavored pudding

4 cups milk

1 (8 oz.) tub frozen whipped topping (COOL WHIP), thawed

10 Oreo cookies, crushed (optional)

Directions:

Prepare cake mix according to package directions for a 9×13 cake. Once cake comes out of the oven, allow it to cool for just a couple of minutes. Then, with a wooden spoon handle or some other similarly-sized object, begin poking holes in the warm cake. You want the holes to be fairly big so that the pudding has plenty of room to get down in there. Be sure to poke right down to the bottom of the cake.

In a medium bowl, whisk together dry pudding mix with 4 cups of milk. Whisk until all the lumps are gone.

Pour pudding over cake. Taking care to get right into the holes as much as possible.

Spread it all out and using the back of the spoon, gently push pudding down into the holes.

Put the cake into the fridge to set and cool (about 2 hours). If you have anything hanging out in your fridge that is stinky, be sure to cover your cake. Once your cake has completely cooled, spread on whipped topping.

Spread it out evenly over the pudding layer.

If you haven’t done so already, crush your Oreo cookies. I just place mine in a ziploc bag and crush them with a rolling pin. Leave some of the pieces big. It’s nice to have a bit of a crunch when you eat the cake.

Spread crushed Oreos onto the top of the cake. You can do this part immediately before serving the cake if you like. This will ensure the cookie bits are crunchy when you serve it.

This cake needs to be kept refrigerated.

Enjoy!

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Red Velvet Poke Cake

Course
Dessert

Cuisine
American

Prep Time10minutes

Cook Time30minutes

Total Time40minutes

Servings12

Calories500kcal

AuthorThe Country Cook

Ingredients

1box red velvet cake mix

(ingredients needed to make cake - eggs, oil & water)

23.4 ozboxes instant Cheesecake-flavored pudding

4cupsmilk

18 oztub frozen whipped topping (COOL WHIP)thawed

10Oreo cookiescrushed (optional)

Instructions

Prepare cake mix according to package directions for a 9x13 cake.

Once cake comes out of the oven, allow it to cool for just a couple of minutes.

Then, with a wooden spoon handle, a spatula handle, or some other similarly-sized object, begin poking holes in the warm cake. You want the holes to be BIG so that the pudding has plenty of room to get down in there. Be sure to poke right down to the bottom of the cake.

In a medium bowl, whisk together pudding mix with 4 cups of milk. Whisk until all the lumps are gone.

Pour pudding over cake. Taking care to pour it right into the holes as much as possible.

Spread it all out and using the back of the spoon, gently push pudding down into the holes.

Put the cake into the fridge to set and cool (about 2 hours).

Once your cake has completely cooled, spread on whipped topping.

Spread it out evenly over the pudding layer.

Spread crushed Oreos onto the top of the cake.

Recipe Notes

Adding the crushed Oreo's immediately before serving will ensure the cookie bits are crunchy when you serve it. Keep refrigerated.

Yum! I love poke cakes, too. This Memorial Day, I did yellow cake with cheesecake pudding, with strawberries and blueberries on top. It was so refreshing and good! 🙂 So I'm sure your red velvet will be great too.

Hi! Sounds like a great idea! Don't get me wrong, I love Oreo cookies, but I was thinking if I reserved a little of the batter to make say, 2 cupcakes, then I could make crumbs from the cupcakes and use that as a topping instead. I think that would look really nice. What do you think?

I just made a chocolate poke cake for my husbands birthday and it's too bad that I didn't see this earlier because his favorite cake is Red Velvet Cake.I will definitely will be making this sometime in the future.Thanks for another great recipe.

I made these today as cupcakes, because I found some fun Olympics themed cupcake liners and we are having spme friemds pver tp watch the opening ceremony tonight. I love the recipe and the cupcakes are yummy, but very messy! I would suggest sticking to a cake with this one! Thanks for sharing the great recipe!

I just got done pouring the pudding on and it is in the fridge now!!! Can wait to show up with this beautiful cake tomorrow for labor day!!! 🙂 thanks so much for the recipe I will let you know what everyone thought about it tomorrow!!!

Thank you so much everyone for such sweet comments!! I'm so happy this has been a successful recipe for you! Anonymous, you could use chocolate but obviously you aren't going to get the same flavor as you would with the cheesecake pudding. Cream Cheese frosting is traditional with red velvet cakes. The closest flavor I would probably try would maybe be vanilla. I hope that helps! ~Brandie

This looks so good!! I'm going to be making this later today! By the way, I found Cream Cheese cool whip frosting and I'm so trying it! It's new and I found it right next to the cool whip in my local Walmart!

Hi Erin! I just saw that new product the other day at Food Lion. I am going to try it out too. My husband loves any kind of whipped topping so I know he would probably love those new flavored frostings they have now!

my husband picked this out for his birthday dessert off pinterest. we just finished it off and it was a hit! everyone loved it! not overly sweet, just wonderful, light and yummy! thanks! kennedy's in texas

I just made this tonight for my and a friend's birthday celebration and it was a HUGE hit! I used Vanilla pudding instead of Cheesecake pudding since that is all the store had, but it was still very delicious. Thanks so much, and I look forward to trying your other poke cakes soon!

I love the description of the conversation, you had with your love. I think it is exactly the same everywhere but you#re lucky because he did know about the pudding! 🙂 When reading about Cheesecake flavored pudding it makes me even more sad i do not live in the US…. This cake looks amazing and I definitely would love to have a piece of this right now!

I work at an assisted living home and I am always looking for something new for desserts. I have 3 residents that are diabetics. I have a diabetic red velvet cake recipe. I am going to try this with that and use the sugarfree pudding anti light cool whip. I think they will really like this. Thank you.

Growing up my mom made a poke cake with chocolate cake, then after it cools poke holes pour 1 can of sweetened condensed, 1 jar of Carmel sauce, cool whip frosting and Heath bar broken into pieces sprinkled on top. It's very rich but delicious.Sarah

Tollestrupfamily – are you sure you weren't looking at the Sugar Free boxes. Those are 1oz. but they usually come in a blue box. You could certainly use sugar free but I just use the regular. The regular usually comes in a 3-4 oz. size. If you want to go sugar free, then use the 1 oz. box. Hope that helps! ~Brandie

I made your red velvet poke cake.I had six people over for dinner.Needless to say there was one peice left when I was putting it away.Everyone left and all of a sudden the telephone was ringing off the hook.The ladies were calling for the recipe.One was even at the grocery store calling so she could get the ingredients.Thank you for something different.

I usually make dessert for my weekly Bible study and am always looking for new things to try. Needless to say, I was thrilled when I ran across this recipe on Pinterest. As we speak, this deliciously yummy looking cake is sitting in my fridge. Can't wait to try it! Thanks so much! 🙂

I made this in a triple birthday cake baking bonanza and people were by far the most impressed with this one. The possibilities seem endless. I didn't have enough on hand to make as much pudding as was called for, but it turned out moist and delicious as expected.

My daughter made this last night. We went to 4 stores but could not find the cheesecake flavor pudding mix. We went with the new Hershey's brand white chocolate pudding mix. It was delicious! Much better than I thought it would be. Very eye catching with the red cake, white pudding and cool whip and black oreos. We will make again.

We could only find the sugar/fat free version of the cheesecake pudding. I won't use aspartame, so we used vanilla pudding and substituted 1 cup of the milk for 8oz of whipped greek cream cheese. It gave it a more authentic cheesecake flavor and turned out fantastic! Thanks for the recipe!

I just made this for our group night EVERYONE loved it, I mean it was amazing. We used vanilla pudding and it was fine, but I agree with one of the posters earlier … the possibilities are endless. Thanks so much for this, I was worried about storing it, would it be soggy tomorrow, but it was GONE! All gone … no better compliment that that!!

This does look good! Thanks for sharing! But actually, the original Red Velvet icing was not cream cheese. It's a light wonderfully fluffy white icing that doesn't overpower the cake flavor as much as cream cheese. But it's ALL good!!

I have made the Boston Cream Cake and the lemon cake. These are probably one of the best cakes I have ever had, just love them and they are soooo easy to make. There is no end to the variations you can make. So glad I came across this site, they will be my "go to" cake when I need a dessert.

First time to check your post. I have only used jello in poke cakes. I am going to try this. In re: to the posts from Canada. Could you use Vanilla or French vanilla pudding and add about 3 oz. of cream cheese and a little extra milk? Any pics I would post of any remarks I send, will give you the credit. Thanks again. Look forward to checking more of this site out.

I'm in the UK and am using the vanilla pudding mix we can get here and then making a cream cheese topping so you still get the cream cheese flavour, hopefully it works out! I'm also doing the chocolate curls. We can get oreos here but my 4 year old would be very upset if I crushed them for a cake!

So, this recipe inspired me to make a lemon cake (I use coconut oil and milk in place of oil and water) with blueberries, lemon pudding, and then whipped topping with blueberries folded in. It was ridiculous. Can you make a lemon poke cake next?

I'm making this one tonight for my hubby's 10-year high school reunion picnic tomorrow (mascot was the Red Raiders, so had to have Red Velvet cake!)…I just LOVE the taste and simplicity of so many of your poke cakes…my hubby is a butterscotch fan so I experimented and made him a butterscotch pudding poke cake topped with Heath toffee crumbles that turned out delish! Thank you!

Thanks for the cake recipe! I made it tonight and unfortunately, I didn't love it.. Sad, I know! Maybe I'm not a fan of red velvet… but due to how rich and sweet it was, I had to stop eating after a few bites. I almost think the pudding adds way too much of a sugary taste.. Maybe I can find ways to modify!

I have been asked to make this cake for Thanksgiving (made it a while back and everyone loved it). I know it's not really a Thanksgiving dessert but oh well, haha. Anyway, I was going to make it at my house and take it to my grandma's, however, her house is about two hours from me. She won't have room for me to bake the cake her oven, so I will have to at least do that part here. If I make the cake here but wait until I get to her house to put the pudding and whipped cream on it, will that be okay? Or will it turn out wrong?Thanks

On my way to the store! Red Velvet Poke Cake?! OMG! BUT, Oreo has made a Red Velvet Oreo recently and it would be perfect for this cake. I am on a quest now to find them again. This cake sounds sinfully delicious. Another winner!